


On a Cold Planet

by a_t_rain



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Culture Shock, F/M, Gen, Jackson's Whole, space mafia family values
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-23 09:49:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6112777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_t_rain/pseuds/a_t_rain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Byerly begins his new life on Jackson's Whole.  His first mission: locate the Baron and Baronne's daughter Topaz by going undercover as an itinerant lichen-scrubber.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Houseless Grubbers

**Author's Note:**

> This is a much-shorter postlude to my novel-length By-fic [A Bit Too Much Good Work](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4168539/chapters/9409704), but you don't have to read that one first.
> 
> Inspired by a throwaway line in _Mirror Dance_ , to the effect that slimy lichen grows on the south side of everything on Jackson's Whole and needs to be scraped off. I have no idea how or why my mind went from there to "Who's doing the scraping?" to "Oh, I bet _that_ would be the worst thing you could do to By."

Byerly Vorrutyer was heartily sick of _lichen_.

It grew on the south sides of buildings on Jackson’s Whole. It crept in at the window frames, coated the door hinges, covered the roofs and choked the gutters. It became slick and slimy at the slightest touch, smearing clothing, ruining paint jobs. It had to be scrubbed off by hand, scraped out of cracks and crannies, washed away with a chemical solution intended to prevent it from growing again ... for a few months, before the cycle started all over.

The people who did this work were the original _grubbers_ , a word that had eventually come to mean anybody who did menial work on Jackson’s Whole, and – in time – a pejorative term for _anybody_ who worked for anyone else. They were itinerant laborers, _houseless_ in the sense of belonging to no House, but also in the sense of having no home. They slept in rickety bunkhouses, and were issued two ration bars a day. They had lichen on their clothes and under their fingernails; they smelled of it, and of the no doubt toxic chemicals used to hold it at bay.

It was unenviable work, but it did have certain advantages from an espionage point of view. First and most importantly, grubbers were the lowest of the low, interchangeable lichen-clearing machines who were _invisible_ from the point of view of a Jacksonian baron. Mostly invisible to House security, as well. They didn’t go inside buildings, but they could move about freely about the grounds, and even peer into windows without attracting attention.

Besides, it was one of the few jobs available on Jackson’s Whole for people who could not or would not undergo fast-penta interrogation as part of their job interview, and Byerly _very definitely_ fell into this category. For one thing, his employers at ImpSec had insisted on inducing a fatal allergy to the truth-drug before he left home, and for another, he was – thank _God_ – not the houseless grubber he was pretending to be. Nor was his business with House Prestene precisely what it appeared.

Assisted by Rish and the audio files supplied by ImpSec, he’d practiced the Jacksonian accent until he was perfect at it, and the Arquas had kitted him out with false identification papers. Star had explained the meaning of the symbols on his Jacksonian identity card, as well as the more detailed information encoded in the embedded chip. The name was fake, as was the planet of birth. The biometric data and medical information were accurate, save that they claimed his fast-penta allergy was natural. Star insisted that this wouldn’t look suspicious. Natural allergies weren’t, it seemed, as rare on Jackson’s Whole as they were elsewhere, since people became sensitized through repeated exposure. Still, he wondered, sometimes, whether he was the first person to join the grubber-gang under false colors...

He contemplated the unlikely pair who were working on the next house. Bodo appeared to be about By’s own age – that was to say, somewhere on the borderline between _young_ and _middle-aged_ – but he had the mind of a six-year-old. Maree, on the other hand was obviously intelligent. A small, fragile-boned woman, she looked to be around seventy, too old for this sort of work. He was uncertain of her background, but he had noticed something a little too crisp and precise about her vowels which suggested she might not be a native speaker of English. Unlike Bodo, and unlike most of the other grubbers, she wore no symbols of the Gnostic faith. Byerly approved. He had never been inclined toward the vague ancestor-worship that passed for religion on Barrayar, but at least he was reasonably sure that his ancestors had _existed_. Jacksonian grubbers seemed to put their hopes in an invisible and unprovable next world as a distraction from the appalling conditions of _this_ one, which By regarded as a dangerous bargain. He wasn’t sure the Barons hadn’t made Gnosticism up to keep the masses quiet.

The first day on the job, he’d offered Maree his mid-morning ration bar, because she was obviously hungry and he wasn’t; rat bars were nutritionally sound but unappealing, and anyway, trying to eat with lichen-slimed hands was _disgusting_. She’d broken a bit off for herself and offered the rest to Bodo.

By evening, Byerly was _starving_. By the next day he’d realized that, while two rat bars a day were theoretically a complete diet for an adult of normal proportions, they didn’t go very far if the adult in question spent his days outdoors in freezing weather, climbing ladders and scraping lichen off buildings. Along with the aching arms, numb fingers, and general griminess that made the work a misery, he was perpetually famished. Maree never asked him to share again, although Bodo kept tagging after him, looking hopeful and hungry.

Maree had been a lifeline when he’d first started. “Not been at this work long, have you?” she asked at the end of his first day.

He shook his head. He’d learned the basics, practicing on the downside buildings Baron Fell had leased to the Arquas until his hands were callused in the right places, but he’d never done it all day, every day. “I used to be a bartender, but the last time I changed jobs, they gave me the patch test at the interview and it turned out that I’d developed an allergy to fast-penta. Now I can’t get any kind of job handling food and drink, and precious few jobs doing anything else.”

She nodded. “There are a lot of people around here with stories like that.” (He wasn’t sure whether she meant to imply that they were all equally false, or whether it was merely an observation.) “You’ll want to take it a little slower. Save your energy for the end of the day, when you’ll need it. And don’t scrub quite so hard, or you’re going to feel it tomorrow. Remember, there’s no reward for being the _best_ grubber ever. You just need to be a good-enough grubber not to get fired.”

She also advised him to tie his scarf over his nose and mouth when they sprayed the buildings with chemicals. “It’s not a proper safety mask, and I’m not sure how much protection it’ll give you, but it’s better than nothing.”

He’d already discovered how badly the chemicals made his eyes and nose burn. Of all the things he’d thought he would miss when he left Barrayar, it had never occurred to him that the Ministry of Occupational Safety would make the list. “Thanks. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Yes, there is. Look after Bodo while you’re in the mens’ bunkhouse. _I_ can’t go in there, and I don’t think he can really look after himself. He’s big, but he’s too _docile_ , and he believes anything people tell him.”

Byerly did not welcome the task with enthusiasm. Truth be told, he found it hard to conceal the revulsion he felt around Bodo, even though it was partly traditional Barrayaran prejudice and partly the contempt he’d always had for people who weren’t intelligent, and he knew very well that neither of these were among his better qualities. “Um. I’ll try my best, but I think you may have mistaken me for someone a bit more ... altruistic.”

She looked him over. “Are you a gang rapist?”

“Of course not! Where would I find a _gang?_ ”

She didn’t smile. “Are you a regular rapist?”

“No,” he admitted.

“Then you’ll do.”

* * *

Slightly over a week later, Byerly had a chance to keep his promise. He’d been asleep, though not deeply – the unheated bunkhouse and thin blankets saw to that. It wasn’t, exactly, the creak of the floorboards that woke him – they creaked _all the time_ , whenever someone got up to use the toilet – but rather, the cat-footed steps that followed, nothing like the usual heavy tread of men who labored all day and didn’t bother with niceties like tiptoeing when people were trying to sleep.

Now wide awake, he went rigid in the darkness and opened his eyes a little. The cat-footed man – it was that new fellow, wasn’t it, the one who had joined the grubber-gang even more recently than he had? – was definitely where he ought not to be, creeping around the edge of Bodo’s bunk and rummaging through his discarded clothing.

The man’s aim seemed to be theft, he surmised with relief, and not ... anything more sinister. Still, he had promised Maree that he would look after Bodo.

The new grubber was younger and taller and heavier than he was, but By had the benefit of an excellent ImpSec physical security course, and the advantage of surprise. He waited until the man had pocketed what he was looking for and was on the way back to his bunk, and then threw his blanket over his quarry’s head and shoulders, pulled him off-balance, and wrestled him to the floor.

The noise had woken most of the others. As soon as he was confident of having the attention of several witnesses, By extracted Bodo’s wallet from the new grubber’s pocket and held it up for everyone to see. “He’s a thief. The rest of you ought to check to see if he’s taken anything else.”

A couple of his larger barracks-mates dragged the thief outside for a forcible search and a bit of rough justice. Byerly shrugged – exactly _how_ rough it might get was no concern of his – and handed the wallet back to Bodo. “Is anything missing?”

Bodo went through an elaborate ritual of taking everything out of the wallet and examining each item in turn with a frown of deep concentration. “No,” he said at last.

“Good. You’d do better to sleep with it on your person after this.”

Bodo looked puzzled. “I don’t have a person,” he said. “Only barons and baronnes and the bosses of companies have people.”

“I meant, under your pillow or something. Somewhere other people can’t get at it.”

“Oh.”

Byerly didn’t sleep at all the rest of the night. He’d caught a glimpse of Bodo’s identity card while Bodo was making sure all of his possessions were in place. And it was marked with the symbol that meant _genetically modified conception_.

That conception had, of course, been more than forty years ago, and it was possible that Bodo had taken a hard blow to the head at some point in between. But he didn’t think so.

He felt, suddenly, very cold and far from home.

_I never wanted to be a hero or a saint or even a soldier. I liked being an idle selfish bastard just fine. Just my luck to land on a planet where everyone else makes me look good by comparison._

* * *

He was, however, a spy, and pretty damn good at his profession, and the Baron and Baronne – he had come to think of Rish’s parents that way, although they weren’t Baron and Baronne _of_ anything at the moment – had made it clear that he was expected to pitch in. They wanted their children back, and he wanted to make himself indispensable lest they take it into their heads to dispense with him. As a matter of pragmatic self-interest, it made sense for him to lend them his skills.

Identifying where Erik was being held, and then committing the guards’ positions and rotations to memory, had been the easy part; there was no way to disguise a cryo-facility. The Arquas had kitted him out with a tiny audio transmitter, and he’d taken the first opportunity to relay them the information, ducking into the shower stall when there was no one else in the bunkhouse and turning the water on full blast. It wasn’t very private – there was only a curtain separating the toilet and shower from the long main room – but it would have to do. He’d been patched straight through to Ruby, who seemed to have no trouble making out what he was saying even over the noise of the water, so he didn’t have to waste any time repeating himself.

He wasn’t sure _he_ had caught more than half of what Ruby said in return, except that her last few words sounded like one of the Gnostic blessings he’d heard the other grubbers exchange, which was just _weird_. He barely even knew Ruby, having met her only a few weeks before going undercover with the grubber-gang. He’d spent enough time on Barrayar with the rest of Rish’s family to slot them into provisional categories, _basically friendly_ (Tej, Amiri, Em, Pearl, Jet) and _basically not_ (Star, Pidge, the Baronne, the haut Moira – although Star had softened quite a bit since the awful night they’d spent waiting to see if her family could be rescued). Ruby, the eldest and acknowledged leader of the Jewels, was as enigmatic in her own way as the Baron, and he’d had the impression that she disapproved of Rish’s decision to acquire a lover without consulting _her_.

He’d had no communication with the Arquas since then; they weren’t ready to launch an attack, and finding Erik had been only half of his mission. Locating Topaz – a prisoner, but not frozen – was proving far more difficult. She could, in theory, have been held almost anywhere either in the Prestenes’ old compound or in the new facilities they’d annexed after their takeover of House Cordonah; or she could even have been moved to an allied House or taken off-planet. According to Baron Fell’s intelligence operations, the last two possibilities were unlikely, although Byerly wasn’t sure why the Arquas put _that_ much trust in Baron Fell. (Rish’s only explanation had been “We’ve got Amiri’s lab notes and we’ve promised him a copy after we take the House back,” which seemed to raise _many_ more questions than it answered.)

* * *

Byerly had been on the job some three weeks – or perhaps longer – when the grubber-gang finished working on the Prestene compound and moved on to the old House Cordonah buildings. They were in a new bunkhouse, but it was just as chilly and inadequate as the other one, with the additional discomfort of a broken window and shards of glass on the floor; the rat bars were the same; the _lichen_ was exactly the same, slimy and nasty and ubiquitous. He was a bit more accustomed to the work, and his arms didn’t ache so much; he had, however, developed a wheezy, phlegmy cough, just like most of the others.

The days began to take on a relentless sameness. Then one morning he thought he heard, very faintly, a rhythmic thunderstorm of drums and maracas. He had a swift, hallucinatory impression of umbrellas blossoming like flowers in a garden, and then he realized where it came from; it was the Aslunder umbrella dance. He’d seen a holovid of the Jewels dancing to it, watched it several times over.

He checked to make sure no one was looking, and pressed his ear to the window. Yes; he could hear the music distinctly now, from somewhere inside the building he was working on. _The building_ ... It was a rambling, nondescript, single-story affair. The blinds were down, so he couldn’t see anything by peering in the windows. As far as he could remember, they were always down. The building had never appeared to be guarded in any obvious way, and he’d taken it to be unoccupied. Apparently it wasn’t. He checked its location against his memory of the map Rish had drawn of her family compound, and yes, he knew where he was: this was the Jewels’ dance studio. Topaz, apparently, was still permitted to practice her art here. Permitted or _forced_ , he corrected himself. No doubt, from the Prestenes’ point of view, she was the sort of trophy who ought to be _displayed_ at some time or another.

The tune came to an end, and he recognized the burst of applause that came after, and then the familiar beat of the next piece. _Not_ practicing, then. Somebody was watching exactly the same vid he had seen.

He remembered Rish on Barrayar; he’d had to know her for a while before he realized how much loneliness and sadness lay beneath the tough, bright facade, and how very impenetrable that loneliness was. He remembered watching the vids with her and realizing that the sight of her sisters was _feeding_ something deep inside of her. A little. Not enough. Was Topaz being sustained in the same way?

He finished scraping the lichen off the side of the studio, and went to join Bodo, who was working on the three-story guardhouse just to the north.

“Hold the ladder, Bodo, and I’ll go up,” he offered. This was his least favorite part of the job, but it _did_ offer a useful vantage point. He threw the occasional glance over his shoulder while he worked on the shutters and window frames. The security staff ought to be changing shift soon. A couple of them, wearing ordinary Jacksonian street clothes, strolled over to the supposedly empty building and went inside; some minutes later, another pair followed, and then another. A different set of six men drifted out after that, by ones and twos. So the studio building _was_ guarded – rather heavily, at that – it was just that they were stationed _indoors_ , and going out of their way to be discreet.

“What are you doing up there?” called a voice from the ground.

He started, but it was only Maree. “What does it _look_ like I’m doing?”

“Come down here. I’ll take over.”

He tucked his scraper and scrubbing brush into his belt and obeyed. He’d observed enough to be sure he knew where Topaz was being held.

“You should have waited for me,” Maree scolded him.

“Why?”

“Because it’s perfectly _obvious_ that you’re afraid of heights. Why do you keep going up there, anyway?”

He shrugged. “Trying to get over it. They say if you expose yourself enough, you get desensitized. Besides, if I didn’t go up there, Bodo would try to do it himself, and you’ve seen how clumsy he is sometimes.”

Maree was looking at him with slightly narrowed eyes, as if she found this explanation unsatisfying, but she said nothing. He shifted the ladder a few feet over and held it steady, and she scrambled up, for all the world as if that sort of thing were _easy_.

Now that he’d found Topaz, he would need only another day or two to make sure he knew as much as he could about the guard rotation and the ways in and out of the building. That was an extraordinary, delightful thought: his time as a grubber was almost up. He stopped smiling as he remembered something else. He had another charge – one that had _not_ come from the Baron and Baronne – and only a little time left in which to fulfill it.

* * *

He thought back to the farewell dinner that Rish had hosted on the night before he went undercover, just him and the Jewels. After an excellent – and generously portioned – meal, they began talking and telling stories about Topaz. She had been the gentle one, it seemed, the one who never teased or bullied her younger siblings; they remembered her as sweet and cheerful and clever.

The Jewels were in constant motion when they reminisced, embodying one person or action after another. (“We like to dance stories,” Em had explained once.) Before long, By felt that they had made their absent sister _present_ ; he knew, as surely as if he had met her, the way she talked and moved. He understood what they were trying to do, and allowed himself to be charmed.

Last of all, they told the story of how Topaz had rescued the Baron and Baronne.

“We have some resistance to fast-penta,” Rish explained, “because of being half-haut.”

“You do? Why didn’t you tell me that when we were on Barrayar? It would have come in handy, that one time...”

She smiled enigmatically. “A girl doesn’t give away all her secrets at once, wild-caught.”

“But Baron Prestene didn’t know that,” explained Ruby. “Nobody outside of the House knows who we really are, or where we came from. So when Topaz stayed behind after the rest of us got away, she was able to convince the Prestenes that she was nothing more than a servant – a slave, really. And she told them, under fast-penta, that she’d always resented the Baronne, and she would be happy to work for the Prestenes and tell them all the Baronne’s secrets.”

“We don’t like doing that,” said Pearl. “Speaking against the Baronne _hurts_ us. Well, maybe the younger ones don’t mind, but it hurts Ruby and Topaz and me.” She looked meaningfully at Rish and Jet. Byerly had gathered that there was – not quite _tension_ , but a vague rivalry – between the Jewels who had been fully adult when the loyalty treatments had stopped and the ones who hadn’t.

“So what she did was very brave,” said Em.

“And it worked,” Ruby added. “Baron Prestene gave her the run of the place, and she agreed to dance for him – and, I expect, to do a few other things for him too – and then she asked, as a particular favor, for half an hour alone with the Baron and Baronne, so she could _flaunt_ the fact that she was working for the Prestenes and rub it in their faces.”

“And he gave it to her,” said Jet, “and she set them free. But of course, when he found out he’d been tricked, he took her prisoner in the Baron and Baronne’s place, and we’ve heard nothing from her since then.” The five of them crouched prisoner-wise, and looked up at Byerly expectantly.

“I understand,” said Byerly. He’d drunk a fair amount of wine by then, and was in the mood to make reckless promises. “I will do everything in my power to get her back. You have my name’s word on it.”

“Thank you,” said Em.

“There’s one other thing,” said Rish.

Ruby and Pearl exchanged a look. “Go on and tell him,” said Ruby.

“I don’t really like to –” said Pearl. “I mean, I’m not _sure_.”

“You can trust him,” said Rish. “He won’t pretend to be sure if he isn’t. And he’ll be looking for the truth, not trying to give us what we want to hear.”

“All right, here it is,” said Pearl. “The last time Amiri came to visit us, about two months before the takeover –”

“No, longer,” said Jet, “it was at Randfest. I remember the fireworks.” He leaped up and let his limbs explode, firework-fashion.

“No, that was three years ago,” said Ruby. “ _Last_ time he visited, it was in the spring.”

“I don’t see what difference it makes,” said Em, “get on with the story.”

“It does make a difference,” said Jet, “because two months isn’t enough _time_ to plot a takeover. If it was spring, it means he didn’t do it, which is what I’ve been saying all along anyway.”

“It _is_ long enough,” said Ruby, “if the Prestenes had the plans all ready to go _before_ they went looking for inside help.”

“No, it’s not,” Jet insisted.

“ _Fine_ , make it at Randfest,” said Pearl. “I won’t swear that it wasn’t.”

“You have spring here?” asked Byerly, as this was the only fact he felt like he had really picked up from this conversation.

“Yes,” said Rish, “but don’t get too excited. It lasts about six weeks, and it’s mostly mud and slush, and then it goes straight into autumn.”

“Autumn is my favorite season,” Em added, “because of all the daffodils.” She became a daffodil, pushing her head up and then blooming with her arms.

“ _Anyway_ ,” said Pearl, “Amiri was here, and the Baron was sitting here –” she twirled from place to place around the table, demonstrating “– and Erik was here, opposite Amiri, and I was right next to him. And Amiri was telling us about some of his medical research, how he thought they were close to a breakthrough in turning back the aging process and extending lifespans, and the Baron seemed _very_ interested.”

“He doesn’t believe in the clone-brain-transplant business,” said Jet. “He thinks it’s barbaric.”

“The what?” asked Byerly.

“I’ll explain later,” said Rish. “It _is_ barbaric, but it isn’t important to the story.”

“And the Baronne thought it was wonderful news, of course,” Pearl continued, “because she’s Cetagandan and half-haut, which means she would outlive him by decades in the natural course of things, and everyone was smiling and nodding, and so was Erik, of course. But like I said, I was sitting right next to him, and I could smell _panic_ on him.”

“And I was on the other side of the table,” said Ruby, “and I thought I saw him get this _look_ on his face, just for a moment. Like someone had pulled his chair out from under him. And then, it was like he’d started to _calculate_ , and he made himself smile again.”

“If I understand you,” said Byerly slowly, “you think he was counting on his inheritance – sooner rather than later – and, faced with the possibility that your father wasn’t planning on _dying_ any time soon, he decided to take steps to secure it. Steps that included colluding with the Prestenes.” This was a story he understood, despite his exotic surroundings. Theo Vormercier, and how many others?

“ _I_ don’t think it,” said Jet firmly. “He wouldn’t. Not Erik.”

“You didn’t grow up with him, sweetling,” said Ruby, “not the way Pearl and I did. And _we_ both think he might.”

Rish said nothing, but she looked torn.

“You want me to find out the truth for you.”

“Yes,” said Rish. “We do. No matter what it turns out to be.”

Byerly nodded. “Would any of you happen to have a small image of him that I could borrow?”

Despite the fact that they had all had to flee their home in a hurry, the Jewels all seemed to have dozens of family holos, and even a few vids, tucked away among their belongings or loaded onto readers. Most of them dated from childhood, and they invariably showed a whole pack of children. Tej and Jet were generally absent, or infants in arms; Ruby, already quite the young lady, tended to hold herself aloof; but the eight middle children, all very close in age, tumbled all over each other like puppies. Happy, well-cared-for, thoroughly indulged puppies. Byerly suppressed an unprofessional twinge of envy.

He studied the images for a moment, looking for clues to character. Erik had something of a watchdog look about him, as befitted the oldest and strongest pup in the litter, but he seemed as friendly and contented as the others. _If you did it_ , By thought, _you’re a damn fool_. But there were a lot of damn fools in the galaxy.

“Have you got anything of him as an adult? Preferably one where he’s by himself, and there aren’t too many clues about who he is or where it was taken?”

Jet produced a wallet-sized image with a neutral backdrop, apparently taken in a professional studio. Dark hair and eyes, the same coloring as Amiri: oh, very good, he could be passed off as By’s brother if anyone discovered the image and asked about it. Tall and _very_ fit-looking, just like Star and Pidge. Features that had been carefully selected for beauty, but still retained enough of an individual stamp to make the face memorable.

“May I take it with me when I go?”

Jet looked around at his sisters. _He really doesn’t want Erik to be guilty_ , By diagnosed, _and he’d probably settle for not knowing that he’s guilty. Jet misses having a big brother._

“Yes,” said Jet after a moment. “Take it.”


	2. A Temporary Homecoming

Maree dropped her scrubbing brush and muttered something that sounded like _hodair_ – which was the same thing Enrique always said when one of his experiments went wrong – bringing Byerly back to the present moment. He handed the brush back and considered what he had learned about Erik thus far, which was frustratingly inconclusive.

He had known this much going in: The Prestenes had certainly possessed support from within House Cordonah; they wouldn’t have been able to take the House without it. And within his first few days on the job, he discovered that even among the grubbers, the rumor had spread that Erik had helped Baron and Baronne Prestene to their current position, and had been rewarded for his pains with execution. According to some versions of the story, he had come to them in private for his reward, and Baronne Prestene had told him, “A man who would betray his own parents won’t hesitate to betray anyone else in the galaxy.”

It was a good story, and it provided some corroboration for Ruby and Pearl’s theory, but it didn’t satisfy Byerly. For one thing, the only witnesses to such a conversation would have been Erik, who was in no condition to talk, and the Prestenes themselves – who might have chosen to put the story about, as a way of striking fear into the hearts of their employees, but they might just as easily have _made it up_ to strike fear into the hearts of their employees. Or, of course, someone else could have invented it all out of whole cloth. He could not regard it as evidence.

How _did_ you prove it, he’d wondered. Financial records? Pidge might be able to access those. But if the Prestenes had offered Erik something less tangible – a promise of control over everything that had belonged to his family, say – there might not be an electronic trail. Particularly if they had _never_ intended to fulfill their end of the bargain.

Wait. Something Rish had explained to him, once, came back to him. _On Jackson’s Whole, the Deal is sacred. You renege on a Deal, you’re going to have a hard time doing business with anyone ..._

There were some signs, he had observed, that Baron and Baronne Prestene were having a hard time doing business with anyone. Delivery personnel demanded to be paid in cash. The supervisor from the lichen-removal company had announced that the grubbers’ pay would be withheld until the end of the job, after he’d received it from the Prestenes. There was grumbling about that; apparently the other grubbers were accustomed to being advanced half their wages up front.

He’d asked, quietly, among the long-term veterans, and it seemed this was a fairly new policy, and it applied only to House Prestene; the company had regarded the House’s credit as solid the last time the grubbers had worked there, just before the takeover. But, surely, the acquisition of House Cordonah and its considerable assets ought to have made House Prestene’s financial position _more_ secure, not less. Yes, it was looking like the Prestenes _had_ reneged on some Deal around that time. That didn’t _prove_ the Deal had been with their rival’s son, but the rumor was starting to look less and less like a story the Prestenes had deliberately crafted, and more like one they would have preferred to suppress.

Where had it come from, then? One possibility, still, was that it had all been made up out of whole cloth, perhaps by some rival House; but there were others. Perhaps Erik had talked about having betrayed his parents, before the Prestenes silenced him, and people had subsequently put the pieces together.

 _Gossip is like a liquid_ , he thought, _it flows downhill_ ; and then, _but by what channel would it reach the grubbers?_ That was the interesting question, because very few people on Jackson’s Whole _talked_ to grubbers. It was like living behind a force-bubble, silenced and untouchable.

Over the next few weeks, he had made discreet inquiries about when and from whom people had heard the story of Erik, but they got him nowhere; it was just one of the things _everyone knew_ , and the few people who could remember where they’d heard it invariably identified another grubber as the source.

Might Erik, he wondered, have met face to face with the Prestenes, and been recognized – perhaps even by one of the grubbers, since they’d been working on the Prestene grounds at roughly the right time? Such a meeting wouldn’t have been _necessary_ with modern communication technology, but it was at least _plausible_. ImpSec, for example, had always had a strong preference for in-person contacts, preferring not to entrust sensitive material to digital communications. Moreover, if Erik wanted to travel to Prestene territory without leaving a record of his travels, he’d have to have done it groundside.

Byerly thought it over, and decided he liked that scenario better than one where Erik had boasted about his coup. He liked it even more when he remembered something else about the Arquas’ evenchildren. Their senses were lightly enhanced – not on the level of the ultrafine perceptions that could tell the Jewels when someone was lying or untrustworthy – but they often didn’t seem to realize there was a _difference_ between them and the Jewels. Pidge, for instance, had made a rather ill-considered and clumsy attempt to poison his drink while they were en route to Jackson’s Whole, and had seemed genuinely _surprised_ when Rish detected it at once. It was a kind of hubris, he thought, and he could see Erik overestimating his abilities, insisting on a personal meeting with Baron Prestene, and coming away from it convinced that he had detected no ill intent.

The Prestenes' groundside holdings were small and compact, and grubbers tended to spread out when they were working. There was a reasonable chance one of them would have witnessed something.

* * *

He would have gone on handling the investigation slowly, so delicately that no one would have noticed he was making inquiries at all, if he hadn’t located Topaz. His time was almost up, and that called for a bigger gamble. At their next break for rat bars, he steered the conversation toward families.

Some of the grubbers, including Bodo, said they couldn’t remember anything about their family, and Maree said only that hers were all dead, but most of the others seemed willing to talk, whether their memories were happy or otherwise. Byerly noticed Maree leaning forward as she listened to them, an intent, inward expression on her face. _She’s taking notes_ , he thought. He was accustomed to doing it that way himself; his naturally good memory for conversations had been sharpened by training and practice until he had no need of an audio recorder.

He wondered what she was listening for. _He_ knew where he was going with this, but she couldn’t, so it seemed unlikely that they were investigating the same thing.

Just as he had hoped, tattered images began to come out of wallets and pockets. It seemed odd to see the grubbers as children, innocent of the fact that their lives would be worn away in grinding labor and poverty. Should he have made the picture of Erik look a bit older and grubbier? No, better not, he was supposed to have had a home and a respectable job until recently.

He produced the image, invented some plausibly-sentimental reminiscences about his brother, and covertly watched the others for any sign of recognition. He knew that he might have to finesse this next bit carefully if anyone _had_ seen Erik, but he didn’t expect his only hit to come from _Bodo_.

“If your brother’s friends with Rizzo,” said Bodo, “you should ask him for some money, and that way you won’t have to be a grubber any more.”

“We’ve lost touch,” said Byerly vaguely. “Who’s Rizzo, and why do you think my brother is friends with him?”

“I don’t know exactly what he does, but he’s _big_ ,” said Bodo. Byerly understood this statement to refer to Rizzo’s importance, rather than his physical size. “He works for Baron Prestene.”

As Bodo seemed to have forgotten about the _why do you think my brother is friends with him_ half of the question, and as nobody else ever paid much attention to what Bodo had to say, the conversation drifted on to other topics, which suited By just fine. _He_ was not inclined to ignore the remark just because of its source. In his experience, Bodo didn’t _do_ lies or flights of fancy; he tended to be very literal. He was also cooperative and incurious, which meant direct questioning would be the best line of approach, just as soon as there was no danger of their being overheard.

* * *

 _No danger of being overheard_ was the tricky part; Byerly needed to use his first available moment of privacy to transmit his news about Topaz to the Arquas. It was Em who picked up, this time, and he could hear her shouting _HE’S FOUND HER!_ to the rooftops.

It wasn’t until they had finished work on the following evening that he had an opportunity for a private conversation with Bodo.

“Yesterday, when I showed you that picture of my brother, why did you think he was friends with Rizzo?”

“Because I saw him talking to Rizzo like he’d seen Rizzo before, and then Rizzo took him into the building where Baron Prestene was, and you can’t go in with the Baron unless Rizzo thinks you’re all right.”

“When was this?”

“Last time we were here. Summer.”

“Did anybody else see them?”

“Yeah, Antone saw them. Antone came up next to me and said _what’s he doing here_ , and I said _he works here_ , and he said _not Rizzo, you stupid oaf, that guy with him_ , and I said _I don’t know_.”

“Who is Antone?”

“He used to be one of the grubbers.”

“Where is he now?”

“He’s dead. He fell off a roof when we were working at Baron Lott’s.”

Byerly kept his face perfectly blank, betraying none of the excitement he felt. “Did anybody see him fall?”

“Yeah, everyone saw. He was squatting on the roof and reaching down to clean the eaves, the way you aren’t supposed to, because he always said it was too much trouble to move the ladder around, and he put his foot on a patch of lichen and slipped.”

 _Sometimes an accident is just an accident_ , Byerly reminded himself. Maree’s timely warnings had saved _him_ from disaster more than once; it wasn’t like the company gave them much in the way of training or safety equipment. “Was Antone new, like me?” he asked, playing a hunch.

“Yeah. He had another job before.”

“What kind of a job?”

“Something on a space station.”

“Would it have been Cordonah Station, by any chance?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Would Maree know?”

Bodo shook his head. “She didn’t ever talk to him. He was already dead when she started.”

It was frustrating that his most promising witness was a dead witness, but Bodo seemed to have a nearly word-perfect memory for conversations, which was something. “Bodo, I want you to think back very carefully, and if you aren’t sure, tell me that you aren’t sure ... but, do you remember whether Antone said _what’s he doing here_ , as if he were surprised to see a stranger talking to Rizzo, or was it more like _what’s he doing here_, as if he recognized the person?”

Bodo frowned. “More like the second one, I think,” he said, after a moment.

“Good. You’ve got an excellent memory, has anyone ever told you? One last question, did you hear any of what my brother was saying to Rizzo?”

“He was talking about an island.”

“An island?”

“Yeah. He was asking was Rizzo sure that all Baron Prestene was going to do was ship them off to that island, and Rizzo said, _oh yes, that’s all arranged_.”

“Send what off? To what island?”

Bodo shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Byerly had drawn out the walk to the bunkhouse as long as he could, but they were nearly there now. He and Bodo stepped into the long, dimly lit central room. He was just debating whether he needed a shower badly enough to endure taking his clothes off in the frigid bathroom, or whether he should just throw himself down on the bunk and _sleep_ , when a couple of men emerged from the shadows. One of them shoved a stunner in the back of his neck.

“Thought Baron Okafor had forgotten you owed him for your last week’s rations, didn’t you? Well, he hasn’t. You’re coming with us.”

Every horror story that he’d ever heard about Jacksonian debt-slavery flashed through By’s befuddled mind. He protested that he didn’t owe Baron Okafor anything, and had never worked for Baron Okafor or even heard of him before, but he had a feeling his captors didn’t care whether he really owed the debt or not.

Then Bodo pulled the man with the stunner off his back, and he turned and realized, belatedly, that it was Rish’s brother Jet. _Holy crap, way to give a man a heart attack._ “It’s all right, Bodo, let him go.”

“It isn’t all right. He was going to shoot you.”

“Not if I go with him quietly. It’s fine, I just need to settle the debt.”

“But you said there wasn’t any debt.”

“There is. I just remembered.”

“Oh.” Bodo shrugged, as if this were just one more vaguely puzzling element in an almost entirely puzzling world. He let Jet up off the floor; Jet dusted himself off, and By followed his captors meekly. The other man, he saw when they got out in the light, was one of the Arqua bodyguards. They had a lightflyer parked more or less openly near the bunkhouses.

“Sorry about that,” said Jet when they had taken off, “but it seemed like the simplest way to get you away. Grubbers _do_ get arrested for debt all the time, and the Houses employing them don’t usually intervene. As long as we bring you back in time for work tomorrow, your company supervisor’s not likely to notice either, and no one will even give it a passing thought.”

“I’m going back, then?” He’d been hoping he could walk away for good, and never think about any of it again.

“Briefly. We’re going to need a few men on the ground, and in particular, we need someone who can get Topaz to safety when we storm the place. And you already know the territory.”

“Um. I’m not exactly trained for rescue missions. Or for _combat_. I’ve had some basic self-defense and weapons courses, but that’s all.” The Arquas seemed to be under the impression that all ImpSec men were intrepid covert ops types – which made sense, because those were the sort of agents who _usually_ got sent to Jackson’s Whole. Allegre must have a _particularly_ warped sense of humor to have sent a dilettante instead.

Jet shrugged, as if By’s lack of training were a minor consideration. “Oh, you won’t need any special training. But you will need access to the buildings, and someone in your current position can do that more easily than anyone else.”

“Grubbers don’t usually go _indoors_ , you know.”

“But you said she was being held in a building on _our_ compound, so Star should be able to get you in.”

* * *

Debriefing was the same the galaxy over, regardless of whether you were working for ImpSec or for a clan of Jacksonian warlords. Byerly spent an hour or more coughing up information he hadn’t even consciously remembered: the layout of the Prestenes’ facilities; the daily routine of all of the employees, not just the guards; the places one would naturally take cover in the event of a surprise attack. Star and the Baronne asked all the right questions to trigger his memory, as professional as any of the military officers he’d known over the years. The only real differences were that he was allowed to have his cat with him, and that Rish set a bowl of lentil-and-sausage stew in front of him and kept urging him to eat. He tried. It was delicious, like all of her cooking, and he’d spent most of the last month feeling like he’d give anything for a real, hot meal – but now that it was in front of him, he was finding it hard to swallow. He didn’t feel hungry any more, just exhausted and numb.

He fed a bit of sausage to Contraband, who had obviously had a better month than he had. The old black cat was sleek and glossy, with the look of an animal who had been well-fed and well-petted. Good. He’d been worried about whether the Arquas would look after Contraband properly.

“Would you like something else to eat?” Rish asked, looking worried.

“No, this is great. I’m just not very hungry right now.”

“Anything to drink?”

He shook his head. He’d been missing alcohol, too, but if he had any right now he’d probably fall asleep in the middle of the debriefing.

“Now,” said Udine, “tell us about this cryo-facility. Entrances, exits, guards?”

The Jewels looked silently at each other, and he realized he had _another_ , perhaps more difficult, debriefing ahead once he was alone with them.

* * *

“Here’s what I know,” said Byerly. Five pairs of eyes looked at him, silent and attentive. “It’s widely rumored that the Prestenes conspired with Erik and then double-crossed him, but I can’t find out how the rumor started. There’s also some evidence that the-world-in-general seems to think Baron Prestene double-crossed _somebody_ , right around the date of the takeover. Finally, it isn’t proof, but I can place Erik at the Prestenes’ compound, walking about the facilities and talking confidentially with one of Baron Prestene’s lieutenants, and being let into a building with the Baron himself. I have a witness. Maybe not the most reliable of witnesses, but I believe him to be absolutely honest, and he did positively identify an image of Erik. I don’t have an exact date, but my witness says it was summer –”

“Actually,” said Rish, “on Jackson’s Whole, that’s pretty close to an exact date. And it fits.”

“It’s enough,” said Ruby. “Enough to set it in front of the Baron and Baronne, at least. They’ve been thinking it was Myk – our old security chief – but this is more evidence than they had against him.”

“Would Erik have any legitimate reason to visit the Prestenes?” By asked.

“No, he would not,” said Ruby darkly.

“You don’t _know_ that,” said Jet. “Dada could’ve sent him on business without telling us.”

“Oh, come on, don’t be naive,” snapped Pearl, and Byerly interrupted before they could start arguing amongst themselves.

“My witness said he was talking to Baron Prestene’s man about shipping some items to an island. Does that mean anything to you?”

The Jewels looked at one another. “Yes,” said Rish after a moment. “Tell us exactly what he said?”

“According to the witness, Erik asked Prestene’s lieutenant whether he was _sure that all Baron Prestene was going to do was ship them off to that island_ , and apparently the answer he got was _oh yes, that’s all arranged_.”

The Jewels exchanged another silent look. “That’s ... pretty damning,” said Rish after a moment .

“Not quite _as_ damning as what we were thinking,” said Em.

“Bad enough, sweetling,” said Ruby, “bad enough.”

“At least it shows that he really didn’t know what he was getting _into_ ,” said Jet, rather desperately, “and he didn’t mean for things to turn out as badly as they did.”

Rish finally had mercy on By, who was _dying_ of curiosity by this point. “Dada always jokes about retiring and buying an island. Not that he ever _would_ , of course. So it sounds like what Erik had in mind was ... forcible retirement.”

“Stabbing his own father in the back,” corrected Ruby. “But anyway ... Thank you, Byerly. That was what we needed to know.”

“Tell me something, in return. Have you ever heard of someone being gengineered to be, um, of significantly less than average intelligence?”

They all looked at each other once again. “Yes,” said Pearl. “An epsilon.”

“Apparently they’re named after some Old Earth novel,” Rish added.

Byerly didn’t know the novel, but he was willing to bet that it was the sort of book people weren’t actually supposed to take as a _positive example_.

“Have you met one?” asked Ruby. “There aren’t many of them around any more.”

“They were in fashion about fifty years ago,” explained Em.

“The idea was that they were more loyal and compliant than a regular worker,” said Jet, “and they would be contented doing any sort of menial work. Which was true, but they weren’t useful for the more complex sorts of work, and they also weren’t good at adapting to new jobs.”

“So when jeeveses came in,” said Ruby, “people stopped wanting epsilons. And most of them were turned loose and became houseless people. They aren’t good at fending for themselves, so there aren’t very many who are still alive.”

“Good God,” said By, feeling slightly sick. “That’s appalling.”

“You’ll get _no_ argument about that from any of _us_ ,” said Rish, “but I would suggest keeping that opinion to yourself when you’re in public. Unless you want to get a reputation as some sort of _idealist_.”

“Are we done for the night?” he asked, feeling suddenly very tired. “I really need a shower.”

“Yeah,” said Jet, wrinkling his nose, “you do.”

“ _Jet!_ ” said all of his sisters at once.

“It’s all right,” said By, who knew perfectly well that he stank of lichen and chemicals and sweat. He’d tried his best to keep clean, but the water in the grubbers’ bunkhouse was barely lukewarm, and the air frigid; you had to _steel_ yourself for a shower, and it was hard to work up to it when you knew you’d be covered in lichen ooze again the next morning. _Hot_ water, and the prospect of a warm bed afterward, seemed incredibly luxurious.

* * *

It _was_ incredibly luxurious, although he had to restrain himself from scrubbing his fingers until the lichen stains were gone; someone might notice if his hands looked too clean when he went back.

Rish had laid out his pajamas for him; he put them on carefully, callused fingers and chipped nails snagging at the fine silk. It seemed odd to remember he was _used_ to wearing that sort of clothing, that the colors and textures of fabric had been one of his favorite small pleasures.

“Have you been sick?” Rish asked anxiously. “You’ve got a nasty cough.”

“All grubbers cough like that. It’s the chemicals. You’ve likely never been close enough to one to notice.”

That had come out sounding much harsher than he’d intended, but Rish didn’t snap back at him. She looked at him quietly, head tilted to one side, and that made him feel worse, but before he could apologize, she said, “Go to sleep, you’re dead on your feet. I’ll be back in a little while. I have a few matters to discuss with my parents.” She plunked Contraband down on top of him like a live heating pad, gave him a quick kiss on the lips, and turned the lights out.

That was odd, he thought; Rish normally disapproved of cats-on-beds, claiming that sleeping with animals was unhygienic and made the blankets smell of cat. (He had to take her word about the second point, but had argued vigorously about the first.)

Elsewhere in the house, it sounded like Rish was having an argument with the Baronne. Byerly wondered if she had just told her mother about Erik. He was too tired to care very much. He fell asleep with his fingers buried in warm, soft fur, and with Contraband’s sandpapery tongue licking at him.

* * *

Some time later, Rish snuggled up to him under the covers and then slipped a hand down the front of his pajamas, which woke him up very decisively. Well, some parts of him, anyway. Possibly not his brain so much.

“Is this all right?” she whispered. “Because if you’re too tired, I could just let you wear some of my underwear when you go back.”

He woke up a little more. “Mmm. Pretty sure this is one of those questions where the right answer is _both, please_. Except I have no idea what we’re talking about.”

She laughed, and slid his pajama pants off. “Scent-marking you, silly.”

“Is _that_ what the kids are calling it these days?”

“It’s so Topaz will know you came from me.”

“Oh.” He wasn’t inclined to _object_ to this method of proceeding, for sure, but it seemed – rather awkwardly intimate, as ways of introducing yourself to your girlfriend’s sister went. “I thought maybe you were going to give me a code word she’d recognize.”

“This way’s more secure. Also more fun.”

“Indeed,” he said, and let her go to work.

* * *

It was still dark outside when Rish’s alarm went off. He grumbled a little and tried to bury himself face down under the blankets. She shook him, pulled the covers off, and gave him a light slap. “Come on, up and at ‘em. We need to have you back before your boss tries to track you down and discovers you’re not at Okafor’s.”

The thought of going back just seemed _cruel_. He pulled on the regulation mustard-colored grubber uniform, clothing that seemed to have been designed with the express purpose of _demoralizing_ people. It smelled freshly-laundered, although he had no idea when the Arquas had managed to accomplish _that_. Wisely, they hadn’t tried to remove the lichen stains.

“I tried to get you out of having to go back,” said Rish, “but Star and the Baronne said we really needed someone on the ground who wouldn’t attract attention and knew the current routines, so it had to be you. I don’t think it’ll be very much longer. A couple of days at most.”

There was a hot breakfast waiting in the kitchen; he was too nervous to be very hungry, but Star and Jet were already tucking in. Star was ready to brief him on the Arquas’ plans.

“We’re going to need to smash them from groundside and space at once if we’re going to catch them unaware. Split-second timing. I hope those mercenaries that Illyan guy recommended are any good.”

Byerly choked a bit at _that Illyan guy_ , and said, “I don’t think you need to worry about that.”

“And we’re going to need split-second timing from you, as well. We want you in there just _before_ we attack, when they’re not yet on their guard, but you’ll need to do the actual getaway _afterward_ , right at the moment of maximum chaos. Stay close to the dance studio, and when we give you the signal, run in and grab Topaz. Here’s the floor plan. Can you memorize it?”

“Yes.” He’d been trained at that sort of thing; he took in the map swiftly, creating a mental picture of the rooms and corridors.

“From what you’ve said about where you were when you heard the music, she’s likely in one of these rooms along the south corridor. You’ll want to take this back entrance. I wouldn’t expect them to station more than one guard there, and we’ll send you in just before shift-change time, when he’ll have his mind on going home. Stun him before he knows what hit him, and you’re home free.”

“All right, but how do I get into the building?”

“Put your hand right here,” said Star, indicating the touch-pad on her comconsole. “It’s lucky she’s being held in one of _our_ buildings, and not theirs. They’ll have recalibrated the palm locks and changed the access codes to the system, but there’s an override code only the Baron and Baronne and their top security people know about – Good. Now the other hand.”

“Did Erik know about this code?”

“No,” said Star, her face grim. Good, he thought, the Jewels had told her, so he didn’t have to. “He did not. So if it still works, it’s good evidence that he was their inside man, and not Myk. One last nail in the coffin before we tell Mama and Dada that golden-boy betrayed them.”

“What if it _doesn’t_ work?”

“Then you’ll have to brute-force it. Go round to the front entrance and wait in the bushes until they’re changing the guards, stun the new guys, drag one of them into the bushes and put on his coat and hat, go into the building and drop the others before they notice you’re not the guy from the next shift.”

“You want me to take out twelve men? Singlehanded? Have I mentioned that I’m not _that_ kind of ImpSec man?”

“You won’t have to deal with them all at once,” said Star, “and by then we’ll have started the attack ourselves, so the new shift will likely be short a few men. One advantage we have over the Prestenes is that they don’t know _we_ know about Erik. They’ll be expecting us to try a snatch-and-grab move with _him_ , not with Topaz, so that’s where they’ll send all the people they can spare.”

“But wait. If the palm-codes don’t work, that means Erik could still be _innocent_. There’d be nothing _to_ know, in that case.”

“Then they’ll be all the more likely to concentrate their best people around the cryofacility. Either way, you’ll have an opportunity.” She handed him a stunner and a plasma arc. “You _do_ know how to handle these, I hope, even if you’re not _that_ kind of ImpSec man?”

“Of course I do.” He decided not to mention that he hadn’t ever fired a plasma arc _outside_ of a training exercise. “But you know they’ll likely search us on the way in, right? Grubbers aren’t allowed weapons.”

“But debt collectors are, and Jet’s got all the proper identification and permits. He can hold them for you and hand them off to you at the last minute. After that – well, you’ll just have to make sure nobody finds them before you get a chance to use them.”

 _Right, sleeping with a plasma arc strapped to my thigh it is, then. What could possibly go wrong?_ “How long a time are we talking, then?”

“Soon. Today or tomorrow, unless anything goes wrong.”

“Don’t wash,” Rish added mischievously, “or Topaz might not know you’re a friend.”

 _God, I hope I don’t have to wait any longer than that_. “How exactly are we supposed to get away, afterward?”

“We’ll send in a pilot and a lightflyer. They’ll need to come in with the others, right at the beginning of the battle, and meet you outside the building. So you’ll need to make sure you don’t take too long.”

“Wait. Why doesn’t Jet just hand me a spare key-remote for the lightflyer along with the weapons? And then one of your men on the ground can play debt-collector again and park it ahead of time, instead of trying to work out another pinpoint-timing rendezvous, and I can take off and fly like hell as soon as we get out of there.”

“You can _pilot a lightflyer?_ ” said Jet. He and Rish and Star were all looking at By as if he’d announced his intention to sprout wings.

“Sure. Where I come from, everyone can. Well, everyone who can afford one, that is, or who has friends and relatives who can afford one.” They were still staring at him. “Can’t you?”

“No,” said Star. “We’ve always had _people_ to do that for us.”

“Well. Think of me as one of your _people_.”

Star gave him an inscrutable look – maybe it meant _we don’t trust you enough to make you one of our people_ – and then said, “All right.”


	3. House Cordonah Looks After Its Own

Jet and the pilot dropped Byerly off at the bunkhouse, dumping him unceremoniously out of the lightflyer for all the world like real debt collectors, and he dutifully trudged off to work.

No signal came that day. He didn’t sleep at all that night, tensing at every footstep in the bunkhouse and always conscious of the weapons concealed under his clothing. It occurred to him that if the Arquas wanted to be rid of Barrayaran surveillance for once and all, what better way than to extract all the information they could from the Emperor’s man, and then dump him back on enemy territory and leave him to whatever dire fate awaited grubbers who got caught with plasma arcs? Hell, they would probably get _away_ with it.

He lingered over his duties all the next day, wondering how long he could remain within striking distance of the dance studio. Most of the buildings around it had already been cleaned and sprayed, and the company superintendent was threatening to dock his pay if he didn’t speed up.

Then, about twenty minutes before the afternoon change of guards, he got the signal.

He gathered up his equipment as if finished with the building – which he was, he’d been reduced to scraping at nearly invisible stains – and then walked casually toward the dance studio, as if he’d forgotten he had no more work to do there. He scraped a bit at the back door, for show. And then, as soon as he was sure the supervisor’s back was turned, he got his stunner out and pressed his other hand against the palm-lock. There was a soft _click_ as the door slid open. He moved swiftly after that, getting inside and dropping the guard before the man had a chance to move or cry out. Star had been right: there was only one guard at this entrance, and he’d been inattentive, waiting for someone to come and relieve him.

There ought to be a janitor’s closet right inside the doors; yes, there it was. Byerly dragged the unconscious guard in and shut the door. So far, everything had gone according to the book. This rescuing-people business, he decided, wasn’t nearly as difficult as he’d been led to believe. He had no difficulty finding the right room, either; he simply followed the music, since the vids were playing again.

When he opened the door, Topaz looked up, wide-eyed and silent. He barely recognized her as the blithe golden butterfly of a girl he had seen in the vids. She was in bed, although it was mid-afternoon. He thought that she seemed too small for such a large bed; then he realized that the covers were lying much too flat. He ran forward and pulled them off, not waiting for her permission.

Oh, holy hell. They’d taken her _legs_.

* * *

After that first, shocked moment, Byerly moved almost by instinct and gathered Topaz up in his arms. She was so very light, no heavier than a child. He’d stopped noticing how small-boned Rish was, since she was undeniably strong and tough. With Topaz he noticed.

The honey-colored skin was almost translucent, with none of the luminousness of the other Jewels. She settled into his arms, neither resisting nor responding to his touch, merely accepting it as if she were past caring what became of her. _This woman is dying_ , he realized.

“Come with me,” he said, as if she had any choice about coming with him. “I won’t hurt you, I promise. No one’s going to hurt you again.” _Or if they do, I will die trying to stop them._

He knew they had to get out of there – before the new guard arrived and found the old one missing, before his supervisor noticed that one of the grubbers had vanished, before Star and her mercenaries stormed the place. Still, he found himself reluctant to hurry. He pulled Topaz close, like a child.

Then he heard shots outside. “Oh, hell.”

Topaz spoke for the first time. Her voice was low and hoarse, as if her throat had been damaged. “What’s going on?”

“Your people are attacking. We need to run, we’ve stayed too long already. There’s a lightflyer just outside.”

“You’ve got a weapon, right? Give it to me. You’re not going to be able to cover us and carry me at the same time.”

He flipped his stunner out of the concealed-carry holster and handed it to her.

“Do you have a _real_ weapon? This thing’s no good except at close range.”

He hesitated only a second before handing over the plasma arc. After all, he’d be just as dead if she turned the stunner on him and left him to the Prestenes’ mercy. Besides, she couldn’t get away on her own, so she probably _wouldn’t_.

He gathered her up in his arms and ran like hell for the lightflyer.

* * *

They must have been spotted almost as soon as they were out of the building, because Topaz rasped “Down!” and fired off a couple of shots over Byerly’s shoulder. He hit the ground, trying his best not to crush Topaz, and an arc of light shot over their heads, brilliant and deadly. Topaz fired again, and then said, “Get up and _run_ ,” and he staggered to his feet and gathered her up and somehow made it to the lightflyer before everything blew up all around them. He tossed Topaz into the passenger seat and told her to hold on tight, and took off just before something exploded in the space where the lightflyer had been a moment before.

He shot more or less straight up – an _insane_ maneuver when neither of them had had a chance to buckle their safety harnesses, but when his cousin Donna had first taught him how to fly, she’d also taught him how to pull off _insane_ – and embarked on a series of unpredictable loops and zigzags, dodging fire to the left and to the right. All hell seemed to be breaking loose around them, ground and air. Star’s hired army had evidently started a massive attack.

A blast rocked the lightflyer, but he managed to steady its course. Oh, _shit_ , he thought, once he had time to think. They weren’t hit badly enough to cripple the lightflyer, at least not in the short term, but he was willing to bet their landing gear was shot. He turned to assess the damage, and realized that a good chunk of the _floor_ in the back was missing. He did _not not not_ like being this high in the air without something solid and undamaged under his feet.

But they were out of range, and holding their course for Baron Fell’s territory. The worst part was over. It registered, for the first time, that his passenger had spent most of the last few minutes being sick all over her side of the lightflyer.

“You all right?”

“Yeah. It’s just motion sickness. You’re a crazy-ass pilot, did anyone ever tell you?” She must not realize how much trouble they were in without functional landing gear, because she sounded remarkably collected, considering the circumstances.

“I’m not, given half a choice. Nothing like Ivan.”

“Who’s Ivan?” asked Topaz. “For that matter, who are you when you’re not being Rish’s lover?”

“Ah. Right, I think I’d better catch you up on a few things.”

Trying to explain the events of the last few months was, at least, distracting, and he and his passenger were both in desperate need of distraction. He made a comic turn out of Ivan’s impulsive marriage (leaving out the part where Rish and Tej had been on the verge of launching themselves off the balcony), and Topaz, at least, seemed to be relaxing a little and enjoying the story. _He_ was thinking furiously about how they were going to manage the landing. Jackson’s Whole offered two saving graces at that moment, snow and ice. Crash-landing into a snowbank was a possibility, but he didn’t much fancy putting Topaz through a crash. The pond near their leased facilities offered the promise of a slightly smoother landing, although it meant he’d have to carry her a lot farther, and there was the possibility of things going _spectacularly_ wrong.

“Any lakes or ponds around here are going to be frozen solid, right?”

“Oh, sure. My brothers and sisters and I used to go skating all the time.” He caught a fleeting, wistful expression, which was swiftly replaced by a _well, never mind about that_ look. He was starting to get an impression of her personality – as pragmatic as Rish, but gentler and more vulnerable – and he wanted so badly to make the people who’d hurt her _pay_. But first things first.

“How thick is the ice, do you know?”

“At least a foot.”

“Good. I’m going to try an ice landing. It might be a bit rough, but _anything_ we do is going to be a bit rough, because that last shot took out our landing gear. Can you get your safety harness on?”

“Mostly,” she said, snapping the buckles into place. The harnesses weren’t really designed for people who were missing their _entire lower body_ , but she seemed to be managing well enough. He took a hand off the steering grip long enough to get his own harness in place, and hoped there was something _in_ that Gnostic blessing he thought Ruby had given him.

* * *

“You weren’t kidding about that part being rough,” said Topaz, and then she threw up again.

“Sorry about that.” He searched his jacket pockets for anything she could use to clean herself up, but he could only come up with a couple of tissues that he’d already coughed all over. He handed them to her anyway. Might as well have _all_ the disgusting body fluids in one place.

“It’s all right,” she said, and then broke something inside of him into little bits by adding, “This is going to sound stupid, but it actually feels kind of good to puke. They were force-feeding me. So I couldn’t starve myself.”

Something clicked in the back of his mind, and he realized he hadn’t seen any sort of remote control for the vid player in the room where they were keeping her. “Did they force you to watch the vids, too?”

“Yeah. Ten hours a day on an endless loop. So I couldn’t ... starve that way, either.”

“Let’s go home,” he said, taking her in his arms again.

* * *

It was a long walk across the frozen pond and the stretch of snowy waste before he came to the rental house. He was stumbling by the end of it, nearly snow-blind. Topaz seemed to be getting heavier by the second.

He shifted her to his left arm and pressed his other hand against the palm-lock; the door clicked open, and he staggered inside. The Arquas didn’t see him at first; they were all clustered around a vid monitor that was showing grainy images of the battle in progress. Only Star, leading the attack in person, was missing.

He cleared his throat, and then found that he had nothing to say. It didn’t matter. They’d turned, all of them, and taken in the sight of him carrying Topaz, and they had no words either.

It was the Baron who stepped forward, while the rest of the family was still staring in shock, and lifted his beautiful broken daughter out of Byerly’s arms. He hadn’t known Shiv Arqua could be so _gentle_.

He still couldn’t talk, although nobody else seemed to notice, because they had all clustered around Topaz as the Baron settled her on the sofa, and started talking a mile a minute. “Oh, you poor darling.” “Are you all right?” “It must have been awful.” “Everything’s going to be fine now.” “It’s over.” “Can we get you anything?” “Can we kill anyone for you?” “Let’s tightbeam Amiri and see what he has to say about re-growing your legs.” Most of them were crying, Shiv and Jet no less openly than the women.

The Baronne’s voice rose above the others. “I will track down the barbarians who did this to you, sweetling, and they will be _begging_ for death before I am finished with them.”

He couldn’t tell whether this was what Topaz wanted or not, because she had nearly disappeared from view behind a solid wall of Arquas. Byerly had the odd feeling that _he_ had disappeared, too.

It was Rish who broke away from the cluster first and threw her arms around Byerly. “You _did_ it! You rescued her!” And then the entire family seemed to notice he was there all at once, and the next thing he knew they were all trying to hug him, and generally treating him like a son who had just come back from a war. Not that he’d know what that was like. He wasn’t a _soldier_. He tried to say as much, but he had an inconvenient fit of coughing and couldn’t say much of anything.

“I _told_ you he wasn’t well,” said Rish, glaring accusingly at her parents. “It’s those awful, drafty bunkhouses. I _said_ you shouldn’t have sent him back.”

“There’s nothing the matter with me,” he protested when he had caught his breath. “And the bunkhouses in _your_ old compound aren’t any better than the ones the Prestenes built, anyway.” Nobody seemed to understand what he meant by this, and he was having a hard time articulating even to himself why it seemed so wrong, suddenly, to be warm and safe, or why he kept thinking about all the times he’d heard Rish use _grubber_ as an all-purpose insult.

Since they all seemed to have decided he was ill, he played along with it, because that was something they could understand. He admitted to a slight sore throat and a headache, which was true enough, never mind that they were the kind you got from trying not to burst into tears. He hoped the Arquas would leave him alone, but no such luck. The Baronne checked him for fever and swollen glands. He liked the way her hands felt, cool and efficient and _maternal_. She said reassuringly that she didn’t think there was anything seriously wrong, but she made him lie down on one of the sofas anyway, where he was instantly surrounded by a gaggle of her daughters offering tea and blankets and throat lozenges and painkillers. Even _Pidge_ seemed to have unexpectedly turned solicitous.

He met Rish’s eyes and shot her a silent _get me out of here_ look. Luckily, she recognized his expression – she’d seen it before, on Barrayar, at other people’s parties – and said, “That’s enough, all of you, let him get some rest.”

* * *

“ _Are_ you sick?” Rish asked, once they were alone in their room.

He registered, distantly, that she had done something new and chic with her hair since he’d seen her two days ago, and that she was wearing a dress he hadn’t seen before, one that clung softly to her body and brought out the curves of her small breasts. He felt a bit guilty that she’d done all that to please him. It _would_ have pleased him, a month ago. This couldn’t be the homecoming she’d been imagining, for him or for Topaz.

“No. Not physically, anyway.”

“But you’re _hurt_. Tell me what’s the matter.”

“I don’t know,” he said, and then, because it felt like he owed her some sort of explanation. “I don’t like it when people break beautiful things for the sake of breaking them, that’s all.”

“Topaz isn’t _broken_ ,” she said fiercely, although none of the anger really seemed directed at him, “and she isn’t a _thing_.”

“I know. Bad choice of words, forgive me. It’s – I don’t even know how to explain it.” He _especially_ didn’t feel like he could explain it to anybody _here_ , because there were grand economies of cruelty as well as petty ones, and while the Arquas might be piously appalled at small, specific atrocities like what had happened to Topaz, they were surely up to their necks in the grand ones, just like everyone else on Jackson’s Whole.

“You don’t have to explain anything if you don’t want to. Just tell me what you need right now.”

He needed to go _home_ , but he couldn’t have that. “A bath,” he said, because that was the first thing that popped into his head. “A long one. And my own clothes.”

“I think that can be arranged,” she said, a little amused. “Would you mind if I go back and visit with Topaz, while you’re washing up? Because it’s better for her, right now, if she can be with all of us at once.”

“Please do. _That’s_ what I need, actually. Some time alone.” Life as a grubber had often been _lonely_ , but never _private_. He missed privacy.

“All right, then. Take care.” She kissed him gently, and ducked back to the room where her family was.

* * *

He did manage to scrub off all the lichen stains, this time. By the time he finished, it felt like he’d taken most of the skin off his hands, too, but at least they were _clean_. In the literal sense, anyway. He contemplated the fact that sweet, gentle, wounded Topaz had almost certainly killed someone – maybe several someones – while they were making their escape, and decided he was glad he hadn’t looked back.

He wanted a manicure – which was a frivolous and vain thing to want, but nevertheless, he _did_. He settled for a generous amount of Rish’s hand lotion.

He also needed to write a full report of everything he’d done and learned over the last month. Back in the bedroom, he stared at his portable comconsole for some time in utter stupefaction, wondering how to begin. Finally, he packed it in and sent off a terse message to the Barrayaran consulate on Hargraves-Dyne Station ( _I’m alive, call off the bloodhounds, will send detailed report as soon as possible_ ).

A stack of data-disks awaited his attention. Personal correspondence, mostly. Ivan had sent a grumpy, and very funny, account of his new life as a military attaché on Ylla, a planet that sounded even more forsaken than Jackson’s Whole, and then a much terser message four weeks later: _What’s happening over there? Why didn’t you answer my letter? At least let me know you’re not dead_. His sister had skipped the comedy part and cut straight to the anxiety. His cousin Dono and his ImpSec friends – a category that now included Lady Alys, apparently – were more blasé, sounding confident that he would land on his feet and they would hear from him sooner or later. He would have to answer all of them. Tomorrow.

He must have fallen asleep reading his mail, because the next thing he knew it was dark outside, and Rish’s hand was brushing his cheek.

“Hey,” she said when he opened his eyes. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“‘S all right. What time is it?”

“Dinnertime, more or less. We were just having soup and sandwiches and watching the battle on the monitors. Do you want me to bring yours in here?”

“Please,” he said, because he didn’t feel like dealing with the whole pack of Arquas just yet.

“Anything to drink?”

“Just water.”

“You’re not going all _virtuous_ , are you? Because I don’t think I could live with that.”

He managed a genuine smile. “Don’t worry.”

* * *

It was good soup, a sort of lemony broth with chicken, and he didn’t find it too difficult to swallow this time. Just _very_ intensely flavored; he had to eat slowly, because it seemed like too much of everything at once. He wondered how long it would take to get used to real food again.

“How’s the battle going?”

“Almost over,” said Rish. “Well, not _over_ over, because there’ll be a lot of cleanup and repairs afterwards, but the groundside part is pretty near over. Not too much damage to the family compound. We might be able to move into the villa as soon as next week, after Star and her people have checked the place for booby traps. I expect it’ll be headquarters for the foreseeable future. There’s still some fighting going on spaceside, and it doesn’t look like Cordonah Station will be usable at all for a while.”

“What about the Prestenes’ side of things?”

“Baron and Baronne Prestene held out in their cryofacility for a while, and we think they escaped to Prestene Station from there, but the mercenaries have all their docking ports covered, so they’re basically trapped, and they can’t stay holed up there forever.”

“How’s Topaz doing?”

“Better. She wants to talk to you. So do the Baron and Baronne. I told them one at a time, and no smothering you. Does that sound all right?”

“Fine.” It wasn’t like he could stay holed up in the bedroom forever, although it had been a welcome relief while it lasted. Jackson’s Whole was his _assignment_.

* * *

“You wanted to see me, Baronne?”

She waved a hand, vaguely in the direction of the armchair opposite her; Byerly took this as an invitation to sit down. “You may address me by my first name.”

“Udine.” It sounded all wrong, addressed to a woman who was “Baronne” to most of her own _children_ , but he didn’t dare to disobey.

She looked him over for a long moment. “We owe you a considerable debt. I want it to be understood that House Cordonah always pays its debts. And it looks after its own.”

He understood, suddenly, what was happening; it was something he’d experienced a number of times before. The moment your surveillance subjects started to _trust_ you, and absorbed you into their inner circle. It felt different, this time, and not just because the stakes were so much higher. He’d usually fallen in with it, taken it as a sign of impending victory. Now, he had a contrary urge to pull away, to remind her that he ought _not_ to be trusted absolutely.

“That’s exactly what they say about ImpSec, you know. It looks after its own.”

“Well,” said the Baronne, sounding almost like Lady Alys, “ImpSec isn’t _here_ to look after you, so I’m afraid you will have to make do with us. Now, if you will forgive an impertinent question, are things as they ought to be between you and Rish?”

“Yes – I think so – Why? Has she said anything?”

“No, she has not. But I know separations can be difficult, especially early in a relationship.”

“Everything’s fine. She’s been – absolutely wonderful. About everything.” It wasn’t, after all, _Rish’s_ fault that she had been born onto this godforsaken world, and he didn’t find it too hard to think of her and the other Jewels as victims of it.

The Baronne gave him a cool nod. “Good. You should have plenty of time to become re-acquainted, because you have certainly earned a rest, and you will get one. Also, if that cough hasn’t cleared up in a week or two, I must insist that you see a doctor.”

There it was again, that unexpectedly maternal note. “All right. But I think it’s going to be fine. And if it isn’t – there are plenty of people who are worse off. By a _lot_.”

“But they aren’t ours,” said the Baronne, as if that were all that mattered, and before he could protest that _he_ wasn’t hers either, “Is there anyone else you would like to see? To talk, perhaps? We can get you the best. From anywhere in the galaxy, if necessary.”

_You’re offering me Betan therapy?_ He shuddered at the thought of someone probing the dark recesses of his psyche and adjusting ... what, exactly? Not what he’d seen and experienced, surely, they couldn’t do anything about that, but – how he _felt_ about it? “No. _Definitely_ not.” Fearing at once that he’d offended the Baronne, he tried to soften his instinctive reaction. “I mean, being a grubber for a month isn’t _that_ traumatic.”

She gave him an odd look. “Being in combat is. For many people, anyway.”

“I’m _Barrayaran Vor_. Trust me, the grubber part was worse.”

The Baronne nodded again, as though she understood perfectly. “I imagine it would be. For my part, I found having my head shaved more distressing than anything else the Prestenes did to us. Until now.”

“I am sorry, my lady. Udine, I mean.”

“Thank you. My daughter would also like to thank you in person. I shall send her in.”

* * *

Looking at Topaz was less awful than he remembered. She’d been kitted out with a float-chair, so she could get around by herself, and there was something subtly different about her skin – a very faint hint of _glow_. Her brother and sisters’ presence? Or just _hope?_

She gave him a sweet, sad smile, and he lost a little more of his heart to her. “I wanted to say thank you. And, you know, to meet you. Properly.”

“Yes, I suppose this afternoon left something to be desired. As introductions go.”

“Oh, actually, I think it was about right as introductions go.” She tilted her head and leaned forward, the same way Rish did when she was trying to take people in with all of her senses. “Rish told me a little about you. She said you were very brave, and you look after people.”

That wasn’t exactly what he would have expected Rish or anyone else to say if they were asked to describe his salient traits, but he found that he liked having someone think of him that way.

“The others all said good things about you, too. Ruby said she wasn’t sure at first, but she likes you now. You have to understand, it’s all very ... new. Having someone _with_ us who’s not one _of_ us, I mean. You are ... staying, aren’t you?”

“I’m staying. And it’s all very new for me, as well.”

Topaz nodded. “Rish thought you seemed a little culture-shocked. You haven’t started with a very good side of Jackson’s Whole, have you?”

“ _Is_ there a good side?”

“Yes. You’ll see.” She looked up, chin determined, eyes bright. “I want you to stay here at _least_ long enough to see us dance. Because I’m going to dance again. I don’t know exactly _how_ , but I will.”

* * *

There was a bottle of amber liquid and a couple of glasses on the table. The Baron waved a hand, inviting By to pour, and to choose his glass: proper Jacksonian etiquette, not so different from the traditional Barrayaran version. Quite properly, the Baron also took the first sip. Byerly drank after him; it was powerful, fiery stuff, but with a surprisingly mellow aftertaste. It was also the first alcohol he’d had in a month; it would go straight to his head if he wasn’t careful.

“First of all,” said the Baron, “thank you. With all my heart. I am sure Udine has told you that House Cordonah always pays its debts, but there are some things that cannot be repaid.”

He bowed his head slightly in acknowledgment.

“That said, if you and Rish wish to marry – now, or in the future – I want it understood that Udine and I don’t intend to ask any payment for her. You’ve paid in full, as far as we’re concerned.”

What in the hell was he supposed to say to _that? Thank you for declining to sell me someone who isn’t your property in the first place_ didn’t seem like the sort of thing you could say to a Jacksonian baron and hope to live.

“Rish also made some other suggestions about appropriate recompense. She proposed new bunkhouses with heating and modern plumbing for the grubbers, as well as supplying them with protective goggles and face masks. And she thinks we ought to look the other way if any of the masks and goggles happen to disappear when they move on. Does that meet with your approval?”

“Yes,” said By, surprised. He couldn’t avoid a nagging feeling that it was really the _lichen-removal company’s_ job to do all of that, and that there ought to be laws requiring it and government inspectors to enforce them, but he wasn’t about to point that out to the Baron, lest he change his mind. “It does, actually. Also, there’s a woman among them named Maree. Older than most of the others. Is there any way you could find her, and see if you can find a different sort of job for her? She might be allergic to fast-penta, but it doesn’t have to be a particularly sensitive job, as long as it’s something less physically taxing.”

“Friend of yours?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll see what we can do.”

“What’s going to happen to all the people working for the Prestenes? The ordinary ones, I mean, janitors and groundskeepers and food-service staff and that sort of thing?”

“Fast-penta interrogation as a precaution. Then, unless they express any particular loyalty to the Prestenes, they’ll go back to their jobs. No reason to get rid of perfectly good staff.”

“And if they _do_ express any particular loyalty to the Prestenes?”

“Then they’re spies, and we’ll treat them as such. Grubbers aren’t loyal to a House that’s already fallen. Not if they’ve got any sense at all.”

Byerly restrained himself from asking what _we’ll treat them as such_ meant. Best not to know what he was in for if he ever got caught. “I see.”

“No, I’m not sure you do. I recognize that look in your eyes. I saw it in all of my children’s eyes at one time or another. Except Erik.” The Baron took a large swallow of his drink and stared off into space, thoughtful. “That was probably the first sign that Erik was the one I ought to have worried about, only I didn’t know that at the time.” Another sip of the drink, another pause. “Amiri, now, _he_ never lost that look. You know, back then I thought that was the most hurtful thing one of the children could do to us, rejecting everything we stood for. I had no _idea_.”

The Baron looked genuinely devastated, so much that By could only say, “I’m sorry, sir.”

“Thank you. You’re a decent kid.” The Baron refilled their glasses. “Now, what I’m about to tell you is the same thing I told my own kids when they came to me with that _how can you be a party to all this_ look.”

Byerly leaned back to listen. _This_ was what he was good at, drinking with people of dodgy moral character and listening while they expounded on their philosophy of life. It didn’t look very impressive on a résumé, but it beat scraping lichen any day of the week.

“You’ve got to consider the history of this planet, Jackson’s Whole. A hundred years ago it was a den of pirates, and the only form of social organization was a war of all against all. Not without a certain raw charm, but not the sort of place you’d choose to raise a family.”

“Some might say,” Byerly murmured, “that it hasn’t changed all that much.”

“Trust me, the baron system’s an improvement. Much like _your_ planet’s system, it might not be ideal or even sensible, but it functions. People rub along. And my point is, it’s a very _young_ world. Who knows where we might be in a hundred years, eh? We might even start exporting _virtue_ , if people ever decide they want to pay as much for it as they do for vice. Not that I’m holding my breath on that one.”

“Nor am I.”

“You’re a realist. I like that. You’ll get along all right here. So, what I was about to tell you is that this place might not run on _honor_ like you people like to tell yourselves your world does, but it doesn’t run on cruelty, either. It runs on power. And power abhors a vacuum. If there’s room to move in, someone _will_ move in. Now, whether those people are people like Udine and me, or people like the Prestenes, or people like the late Baron Ryoval –” (Byerly already knew more than he wanted to about Ryoval, who figured prominently in ImpSec’s report on Jacksonian culture and society) “– doesn’t matter, from a power point of view. It’s a grand game, and one sort of man can win it as easily as another, as long as he’s intelligent and ruthless enough to play well. But it _does_ matter, often a great deal, to the people who work under them. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I think so,” said By. “The most humanitarian form of social organization possible just so happens to be one where you are the head of a Great House.”

The Baron roared with laugher and clapped him on the shoulder. He supposed this was better than some of the other things the Baron could have done, such as having him taken out and shot.

“We’ll get along, son. I think I’m going to like having an outside view on things.”

There was a knock on the door, and then Pidge poked her head in without waiting for an answer. “Dada, I’m sorry to interrupt, but the Prestenes are on the vid feed. They have Erik’s cryopod, and they want to Deal it in exchange for their lives.”

Shiv hesitated only a moment. “Tell them we’ll Deal.”

“But he betrayed all of you,” said Byerly.

“Yes. He did. But that doesn’t make him any the less my son. And given that he _is_ my son, I can’t pretend I bear no responsibility for the choices he made.”

He remembered the blankets lying flat where Topaz’s legs ought to be. “Surely, there are choices that are not – forgivable.”

Shiv turned, halfway out the door, and gave Byerly his full attention. “Rish has told me a little of your story,” he said, “and I must confess that I’m surprised to hear you arguing _that_ side of the case.”

_But that’s why I need to argue that side_ , he thought, in a sudden flash of clarity. _I need what my da did to be – not right, but at least rational, the choice that anyone would make if I’d actually done the things I was accused of ..._

“I’m not arguing anything,” he said.

“Good,” said the Baron, “because there is nothing you could say that would change my mind. Not about this.” He turned and followed Pidge, looking every bit as exhausted as Byerly felt.

* * *

“How was it?” asked Rish.

“You know how, in the vids, when undercover informants join the mob –” He hesitated, wondering whether Rish would take offense at his comparing her family to the mob, but she didn’t seem to mind. “And, after months and months, they start to sympathize with the people they’re informing on? Well, it was like one of those vids _sped up_.”

“You haven’t felt that way before?”

“Not like this.”

“Well,” she said, looking him over and smiling in that enigmatic Rish-way of hers, “it’s a good thing you’re not an undercover informant any more. I mean, all of you know the game’s being played, so it’s perfectly fair, and Dada, for one, will get a kick out of playing it.”

He nodded, although he wasn’t quite sure that she’d cut to the heart of what was troubling him. He was going to have to write to Lady Alys about it, later. (It occurred to him that envying other people their parents was getting to be a habit of his; he’d been secretly jealous of Ivan for years.)

“Bedtime?”

“Yes,” he said gratefully, although it was clear that he wasn’t going to get any _sleep_ any time soon, since Rish seemed to be very determined to assist in the removal of his clothes. “Am I being scent-marked again, or is this just for us?”

“ _Just_ for us.”

“Good,” he said, and permitted her to have her way.


	4. Baron Prestene's Property

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is probably the case that neither A. A. Milne nor the Village People really belong on Jackson's Whole. Oh well...

Disappointingly, Rish was gone when Byerly woke, but the sun was streaming in the window and the bed was blissfully warm and soft, so he enjoyed the morning regardless. When he’d finally had his fill of laziness, sometime around noon, he got up, dressed, and went looking for coffee.

The only person in the rental house’s large living-and-dining area was Pidge. “Good morning,” she said, coolly but civilly. “Are you feeling better today?”

“Yes, much better. Where’s Rish? Where’s everyone, for that matter?”

“The Jewels all took Topaz to the clinic on Fell Station. They’re going to consult some doctors about the possibility of re-growing her legs.”

“Oh, good.” He hadn’t realized that might be an option, but of course, the Arquas could afford the best medical treatments available.

“And the Baron and Baronne went to have a look around the compound, now that it’s more or less secured. Star’s still there supervising the clean-up. So it’s just me holding the fort. Would you like some coffee?”

“Yes, but I’ll make my own, thanks.” He tossed out the old coffee and started a new pot; reached for a bunch of hothouse grapes from the fruit bowl and then hesitated, considering how easy it would be to tamper with a grape.

Pidge was standing in the door of the kitchen, watching him. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, I’m not going to poison you.”

“Your track record on that point,” said Byerly, “is not of the sort to inspire confidence.” (It had been sort of farcical, actually; Pidge had handed him a glass of wine one day while they were still on Vormercier’s ship, and Rish had said, very quickly, “Don’t drink that, wild-caught, I’ll get you a fresh one,” and then glared at Pidge until she finally said, “Oh, _fine_ , I’m sorry.” Just a normal, everyday assassination attempt among relatives. Luckily, being a Vorrutyer _prepared_ you for that sort of thing.)

Pidge, unexpectedly, flushed. “I really _am_ sorry about that, you know. And not just because my parents lectured me to within an inch of my life. I would never have done it if I’d known everything I know now.”

“Why _did_ you do it?”

“Right, I guess we’re going to have to have an actual conversation about that. We might as well sit down and get comfortable.”

Pidge led the way back into the living room, where By settled on one of the couches and popped a couple of grapes in his mouth, letting them burst slowly on his tongue. He’d never properly _appreciated_ fresh fruit before.

Pidge took a seat on the opposite side of the room, looking very much the opposite of _comfortable_. “What you need to know,” she said after a moment, without looking directly at him, “is that we had _nothing_ when we first got away, before the Baron and Baronne joined us. So we all ... sold ourselves to raise money, because there wasn’t anything else to sell. Well, Star and Pearl and I did. We tried to keep Em out of it, because she’s never liked sex with men very much, and also because ... well, Pearl can put on a bit of makeup and look pretty much like everyone else, but Em was going to attract the kind of men who like to _collect exotics_. You know.”

“Yes,” said Byerly, beginning to understand where this was going.

“And when we first met you, and saw that you’d taken up with Rish – well, I didn’t have any way of knowing that you _weren’t_ one of those. Or that you were what she _wanted_. She tends to be sort of ... evasive when people ask her about you, you know.”

“I see.” Pidge’s expression did not invite sympathy, so he didn’t offer any.

“And we’d all heard _plenty_ about Barrayaran men. From Grandmama, among other sources. None of it good.”

“If it came from your grandmother, you _do_ realize it’s about a hundred years out of date.”

“Yes. You and Ivan aren’t – Well, you’re not necessarily the people I would have _picked out_ for my kid sisters, but you’re not anything like what Grandmama was describing, either. And, well, Rish made it very clear that _she_ had picked you out, afterwards, and she said I wasn’t to interfere again.”

_Interfere_ struck By as a somewhat euphemistic way to describe an attempted murder, but he let it pass.

“She also told me you’d worked with women who were prostitutes. She’d gathered from watching vids that they were pretty much the lowest of the low on Komarr, and lower than _that_ on Barrayar, but she said that you talked about them like any other colleague. And that you looked out for them. She said that was one of the things that made her take notice of you.”

“I don’t think it’s anything to be ashamed of, no.” He caught her eye and held the look for a moment.

“So. Consider it a misunderstanding. Friends?”

“All right. Friends.” Privately, he was reserving judgment, but Pidge’s story felt and sounded truthful.

“Oh, happy birthday, by the way.”

“Is it?”

“Well, your passport says it is.” He’d almost forgotten that he’d left his passport with the Arquas; Pidge took it out of her purse and handed it back. “What’s it like being forty?”

“About the same as thirty-nine. I wouldn’t have noticed the difference if you hadn’t told me.”

“We all chipped in and got you a present.” Pidge waved a hand toward the alcove near the front door, indicating a brand-new pair of float-skis and a couple of poles. “I don’t think the others will mind if you try them out before they get back, because it’s really a perfect day for float-skiing, and it would be a shame to let it go to waste.”

“Um. It was awfully nice of you to get me something, but ... I’ve never really cared for heights.”

“Yeah, you told us that already, so we got you the cross-country kind. If you don’t know how to use them, I’ll teach you. Pretty much everyone on Jackson’s Whole can float-ski – it’s the best way to get around if you don’t have a sledge or a lightflyer – so you don’t want to be left out.”

“All right.”

“You can borrow Dada’s old jacket and boots, he won’t mind. Oh, and take your stunner. We’re going outside the inner security perimeter, and _I_ won’t be armed.”

Byerly nodded. That was proper Jacksonian etiquette, too, although it wasn’t like he could _search_ Pidge to find out whether she was telling the truth.

* * *

The jacket felt too bulky on By’s frame; he was within a few centimeters of the Baron’s height, but much thinner, especially after living on rat bars for the last month. He was really going to need to get a ski jacket of his own, but this one would do for now. It was a little shabby but very warm, and it smelled like the Baron. He wasn’t sure why he found this comforting, but he did.

Float-skiing wasn’t difficult, it turned out; once Pidge had showed him how to use the poles, he could skim over the snow as quickly as she could, although he wasn’t so good at turning or stopping until he got used to the antigrav. She had to help him up a few times, teasing him about his clumsiness – until he not only mastered turning, but also figured out how to bank in a way that sent a plume of snow straight into her face.

Huh, it was almost like getting a new _sister_. He’d never have expected _that_ to happen with Pidge.

He struggled up a small hill – hard on the arms and legs, that was – and paused to catch his breath. He hadn’t had the leisure to notice it before, but there was a certain raw beauty about the landscape before him. The tangled stems of the native scrub stood out against the snow like a drawing in charcoal. There were mountains rising behind it all, remote and pure.

“The commercial shuttleport’s that way,” said Pidge, waving her hand toward the south. “About two hundred kilometers. _Our_ territory is about as far again on the other side.”

_You could cover that on float-skis_ , he realized. A few rat bars stitched into the lining of his jacket, the passport Pidge had just returned to him, and as much cash as he could carry ... He could get away from Jackson’s Whole without a trace.

He wondered if the Baron and Baronne would confiscate his float-skis once they worked that out, and then he thought about Tej, and about Amiri, and about all of the Jewels, and he decided they probably wouldn’t. _These people give their children wings._

* * *

It was late afternoon when By and Pidge returned to the rental house, pleasantly tired and hungry. He went to see if there were any sandwiches left over from last night while Pidge checked her comcall messages.

She looked up as the Baron walked in the door. “Baronet Molina called. He says he understands that Baron Prestene is no longer in a position to keep up with the maintenance fees on the property he commissioned. His father would like to know whether you would like to purchase the property yourself, or whether he should destroy it.” There was an undercurrent of brittle irony in Pidge’s voice, which By did not understand.

“Did he give any details? How many, for a start?”

“One. Standard replacement version. About a year old.”

“I think he knows very well destruction is not an option,” said Shiv. “Not for me.”

Pidge sighed. “You have a reputation for being ... sentimental on that point, yes. From a business standpoint, I’d have advised you to keep your views a bit quieter. I hope you and Baron Fell had a prior agreement that you got all the groundside property regardless of what it was, because if you entered into any sort of divvying-things-up Deal, you can expect him to make some big demands in return.”

“And I suppose the Molinas will also claim Baron Prestene owed them for a full year of maintenance, and make us pay through the nose.”

“They know you won’t be a regular customer, so yeah, I guess the Baronet will try to soak you for as much as he can.”

“Well, so it goes. Find out how much he’s asking, and see how far you can talk him down. And remind him that he won’t get anything at all if he chooses ... destruction.”

“But you definitely want me to ... collect? Regardless of the costs?”

“Yes.”

“What sort of property?” By asked, but Pidge was already on her way out the door.

* * *

“We found the woman named Maree and offered her a position as a groundskeeper,” said the Baron. “She declined and suggested that we hire one of the others instead. She said he wasn’t very bright, but hard-working and reliable, and able to do any kind of physical labor. Bodo, I think the name was.”

Byerly felt ashamed to have forgotten about Bodo. “Yes, he’s a good man and he’s been a lot of help to me. By all means, hire him. But is there any way I could speak with Maree in private?”

“If you like. I’ll call Udine and tell her to bring her along when she comes back.”

* * *

Pidge returned before the Baronne did. She had a diaper bag slung over one shoulder and a red-snowsuited child asleep in her arms. _About the same size as Dono and Olivia’s baby_ , By thought, although in fact, Charles Clement Vorrutyer had probably grown quite a bit since he’d left Barrayar. The light hair and long-lashed eyes also reminded him a little of CeeCee.

“Good Lord!” said By. “What happened? I thought you were supposed to be collecting Baron Prestene’s property?”

“Yes. This is it,” said Pidge.

“That’s a baby,” said By, rather stupidly.

“How very perspicacious of you.”

_Hey, wait a minute, I’m the one who’s supposed to be bringing the snark here_. “But ... but I don’t understand. Is it Baron Prestene’s child? Grandchild?” The fair coloring was unusual for Jackson’s Whole, and very much like Baron Prestene’s.

“ _That_ ,” said Pidge, “is one of the most vexing questions in galactic law. On some planets, he would be regarded as Baron Prestene’s son; on others, as his brother. Here, he is merely property. Which we seem to have ... inherited.”

“He’s a _clone_ ,” said By, suddenly enlightened. And then he remembered that Jet had said something, once, about how Baron Cordonah disapproved of the _clone-brain-transplant business_ , and it came to him, all at once, what _standard replacement version_ meant in this context. “What are you going to _do_ to him?” he asked in horror.

“We’re not going to _do_ anything to him,” said Pidge. “We are not barbarians. Unlike _some_ people. Hold him for a minute, will you? I’d better see if I can catch the Jewels before they leave Fell Station and tell them to shop for baby things. And see if they can coax Nana out of retirement.” She thrust the child into his arms and started tapping away at her wristcom.

After a lengthy conversation with one of her sisters, in which the phrases “ _I_ don’t know, you’re the one who’s so keen on babies,” and “Can’t you remember what Tej and Jet had?” figured heavily, Pidge finally cut the com and glanced at the rocking chair where Byerly had settled with the baby. “Oh, hey,” she said in some surprise, “you actually know how to hold one of those.”

“Well, don’t shout it from the rooftops, I’ve got a _reputation_ to keep up. Is he all right? He didn’t wake up at all when I took his snowsuit off.”

“Oh, they’ll have drugged him. They nearly always do if they’re trying to transfer a clone anywhere.”

“Mmm. Not that I’ve got anything to say against consciousness-altering drugs, in general – but one year old is a bit young to start in on that sort of thing, isn’t it?”

Pidge shrugged. “It won’t hurt him. They don’t ever use anything that would risk physical damage to the clones.”

“How about, you know, _mental_ damage? Does anyone care about turning their brains to mush when it’s so much biological waste matter anyway?”

“No,” Pidge admitted, “they do not. It’s a filthy business, don’t think I’m making light of it. But funnily enough, my parents wouldn’t have become the Baron and Baronne without it.”

Byerly was instantly alert; one of his duties was learning as much as possible about Jacksonian history and internal politics.

“They were the old Baron Cordonah’s most trusted lieutenants, and he left them in charge when he went in for brain transplant surgery, and also made them his heirs. Well, he didn’t survive the surgery, so they inherited the whole lot. The old Baron’s son challenged the will on grounds of undue influence, but Mama and Dada outbid him. And then he tried a takeover, but they were right on top of that, too.”

“Outbid?”

“That’s how Jacksonian law courts work. It’s basically a silent auction. No skill to it, that’s why I specialize in galactic law. But it’s my opinion they would have won in an off-planet court as well. If I were arguing it, I would have pointed out that the old Baron was _clearly_ of sound mind, else there would have been no point in transplanting his brain into a new body in the first place –”

“Or that he _thought_ he was of sound mind. Does anybody actually _believe_ they’re going senile?”

“ _You_ wouldn’t have been on the jury, I’d have had you struck before you had a chance to ask inconvenient questions like that. I’d have packed it with soft-headed sentimentalists, and then made the point that Mama and Dada had been right by the old Baron’s side for the last ten years, looking after him as he got older and frailer, and the son _wasn’t_.”

“But ... did your parents, by any chance ... influence the outcome of the ex-Baron’s surgery?”

“You’ll have to ask Dada about that one. If he’s in the right sort of mood, he might even tell you. As their lawyer, it’s better if _I_ don’t know.”

“I see.”

“Keep in mind, it’s a dangerous procedure under any circumstances. It became ... significantly less popular for quite a few years after the old Baron died, and then there were some improvements in the survival rate, and people started to be willing to risk it again.”

“Jet said your father didn’t believe in it.”

“He likes kids too much. He’s been wanting a grandchild of his own for ages, but other people’s kids are all right, too. He’ll go crazy over this little fellow.” Pidge contemplated the sleeping child. “He’ll have to be properly guarded, of course. It’ll drive Prestene nuts that he can’t get him back. And if he grows up adoring Dada, well, that’s a _particularly_ elegant form of revenge, isn’t it?”

* * *

Byerly contemplated the woman who had been his co-worker. There was really only one reason why a grubber would fail to jump at a chance for a better position, so Maree’s refusal confirmed what he had been suspecting for some time.

“It isn’t really Maree, is it? Maria?”

“Mariluz.”

“I _thought_ that was an Escobaran accent.”

Mariluz smiled faintly. “And _I_ thought you weren’t exactly who you were pretending to be. So I see we were both right.”

He nodded. “What I’m about to propose is somewhat irregular, but I think we might be of mutual benefit to each other, since we’re colleagues, in a sense.”

“I think you have made a mistake,” said Mariluz, sounding a little affronted.

“No, I think not.” He showed his civilian operative badge, which was another one of the documents Pidge had returned to him. “Barrayaran Imperial Security Service, Galactic Affairs division.”

“That does not make us colleagues.”

“Look, I know relations between our governments have occasionally been ... strained in the past, and I realize you’ll need permission from your superiors at the Investigatif Federale to enter into any sort of ... arrangement with me, but I _do_ think we might be useful to each other. Think it over.”

“No, really, I _don’t_ work for the Investigatif Federale. I work for _La Prensa Galactica_.”

He recalled the name from the massive amount of Galactic Affairs reading material his new supervisors had given him to study. “You’re a _journalist?_ That’s all?”

Mariluz positively bristled. “ _I_ happen to think being a journalist is an honorable profession. More so than being secret police, isn’t it?”

“No, I don’t mean any disparagement to journalists, it’s only – You’ve been out there for months, enduring hell and risking your life if you’re caught – and nobody’s got your back, I assume – and you’re doing it all for the sake of a _news service?_ ”

“If we did not,” said Mariluz, “then who would? Who is there to shine a light into the dark corners and tell these stories to the rest of the galaxy? Most of the people who _live_ it have no way of making themselves heard, or believed.”

“Is it really a _story_ that Jacksonian grubbers get exploited? Isn’t that one of those things that everybody already knows?”

“Did you know, really? Before you came here?”

“No,” he acknowledged. “It was just one of those things that you know is going on somewhere out there in the galaxy, but that doesn’t make it _real_.”

“I make it real,” said Mariluz. “Even to people who have never set foot on this planet. That is my work.”

“Will it do any good?”

“Will yours?”

“ _I_ like to think so.” He trusted in the grand chess match that the Emperor seemed to be playing on Jackson’s Whole, even if he wasn’t sure himself what the end-game was supposed to look like. He couldn’t tell Mariluz about that, though, and in any case there was no reason why the Emperor should know or care about the exploitation of Jacksonian laborers, so it might not count as “doing good” from Mariluz’s point of view. It came to him that there _was_ some information he could share that was of no use to him, but might be very useful to her. “Have you managed to find out what Bodo’s background is?”

“Only that he doesn’t remember his family. Or anything, really, other than one menial job after another.”

“He can’t remember his family because he hasn’t one. He was _manufactured_. I can get you an interview with someone who can tell you more.”

* * *

The Jewels returned all in a flock, laden with toys and baby equipment and accompanied by a grandmotherly woman whom all of the young Arquas addressed as ‘Nana’ and treated with great affection.

Byerly had some difficulty persuading Ruby to tell an off-world reporter all about epsilons, but after some time, they ironed out an agreement that Pidge would be present and that Mariluz would not ask any questions about anything _other_ than epsilons. Mariluz kept her end of the bargain, although she was obviously _dying_ to ask all about Ruby’s own genetic modifications.

Baron Prestene’s clone was fully alert by then, pointing at everything and saying “Toby, Toby, Toby,” which seemed to be the only word he knew. No one had any idea whether it was his name, the name of his caregiver, or a random combination of sounds that he happened to like, but they all called him Toby, since nobody had any better ideas. He had been eating dinner with the family, or rather getting dinner all over the table and the floor, and now the Arquas were doing their best to settle him for the night, with Topaz holding him in her float-chair and reading from a book of poems called _Now We Are Six_. (“I bought that for Jet when he was born,” Rish remembered, “only I think I had the wrong idea about what the title meant.”)

“What did they say at the clinic?” Byerly asked in an undertone.

“It’ll be about three months to re-grow her legs. We had a DNA sample sent straight off to Amiri’s clinic on Escobar, because the Baron trusts them more than any of the doctors here. And then she’ll need physical therapy after that.”

“And then?”

Rish grinned. “ _Then_ we are going to dance.”

**Epilogue: One Month Later**

The Arquas’ downside residence was really a vacation home, appointed for pleasure rather than business. Besides the dance studio, the outbuildings included a gymnasium, ski chalet, geothermally heated swim pavilion, and a vast complex of greenhouses for growing fresh fruit and vegetables. (Bodo had been installed as second assistant gardener, and according to the head gardener, was doing very well.) There were also some houses that were theoretically servants’ cottages, although they would have been very comfortable middle-class homes on Barrayar. With only a little resistance from the senior Arquas and from Ruby, By and Rish had managed to claim one for themselves. He was of the opinion that there was such a thing as _too_ much family togetherness, and somewhat to his surprise, Rish backed him up. Besides, he was supposed to be running a safe house for the thinly-scattered network of Barrayaran agents working on the planet’s surface, and they’d need a place of their own to do that.

For now, though, no agents-in-need-of-succor had shown up, and he had a great deal of time to himself. Byerly did not really share his new family’s boundless enthusiasm for athletic pursuits, but he was becoming rather good at float-skiiing, and he did enjoy the swim complex, where you could have a nice long soak in the hot pools and then swim right up to the bar whenever you got thirsty. Besides, it was _delightful_ getting to experience all the buildings from the _inside_. He was even getting to the point where he could walk past the grubber bunkhouse without suppressing a shudder.

He’d wondered whether Topaz would be able to face returning to the dance studio at all, but to his surprise, she spent most of her time there, watching her brother and sisters practice. (Ruby had wanted to declare a moratorium on dance practice until Topaz was able to join them, but Topaz had gently but firmly overruled her.) Byerly spent a lot of time watching practice as well, theoretically _keeping Topaz company_ , although she didn’t really seem to need it; she was usually absorbed in her sketch pad, looking up only when she wanted By’s opinion on a question of costume or set design. Once the novelty of watching five attractive and scantily clad people cavort had started to wear off, he’d taken to bringing along his portable comconsole and the day’s delivery of messages.

Today it was mostly personal correspondence, starting with Ivan’s latest missive from Ylla. _... The beach looks nice, but the sea is both corrosive and inhabited by sea monsters – which eat people if they’re not careful – if both the people and the sea monsters aren’t careful, I mean, because we are highly toxic to them, although this isn’t much consolation if you’ve already been eaten. From an evolutionary perspective, it seems like an exercise in complete futility. Anyway, Tej and I are having a pool installed. Have you ever had to deal with contractors? I keep wanting to walk face-first into a wall, but Tej pointed out that it would be more productive to push one of the contractors into the wall instead, only I’m not sure that would count as Maintaining Harmonious Relationships With The Local Population. On the other hand, I bet some of the local population would thank us ..._

Byerly smiled and flipped to the next message. Then he nearly dropped the comconsole as if it were a live snake – which it surely _was_ , according to Ivan’s filing system. It was from _Illyan_.

He thought back to the long, confessional, and somewhat incoherent letter he’d rashly written to Lady Alys right after his return from his undercover mission. Damn it, that was meant to be _private_. It just went to show that you couldn’t trust people after they got _coupled up_.

_Alys has taken me the liberty of showing me your letter, feeling that your dilemma falls under my area of expertise rather than hers. If I understand you correctly – and here I must point out that your prose style, though undeniably expressive, still leaves something to be desired in clarity and conciseness – you are concerned that your growing attachment to your partner’s family has left you, in your words, ‘compromised.’ I do not know why you are suddenly developing scruples about potential conflicts of interest when you have never evinced any before, but your concern does you credit. A moment’s reflection, however, should reassure you that at the levels where you are now operating, everyone is compromised. ImpSec, as an institution, certainly is. We could hardly have entered into a symbiotic relationship with a Jacksonian Great House if we were not._

_The best advice that I can give you is to choose compromises that you can live with, and that will not be absolutely disastrous for anyone else. I leave the details up to your judgment. You would not have been entrusted with your new position if you were not, in the eyes of your supervising officers, capable of balancing your various responsibilities and loyalties..._

Good God, Byerly thought, if there was anything more unnerving than being chewed out by Illyan, it was being _trusted_ by Illyan.

He distracted himself by pulling up a holovid-message from Dono and Olivia, showing baby CeeCee romping with Max, the dog. He was going to have to send them a vid of Toby. Speaking of whom, Topaz had set her sketching aside and gone to fetch Toby on her float-chair, which was always the signal for the Jewels to take a break and coo over him.

“The Baron finally found his copy of _Ten Thousand Ethnic Baby Names from Old Earth_ ,” Topaz announced. “It says ‘Toby’ is short for Tobias, which is Hebrew and means ‘YHWH is good,’ but it didn’t say what ‘YHWH’ stood for.”

“It’s the name of a dance, isn’t it?” said Em. “Remember how we did that program of traditional North American folk dances that one time, and there was one where you made letters with your body?”

“That was called ‘YMCA,’ silly,” said Rish. “Natural people can’t make an H.”

“Can’t they?” asked Jet. “It’s not that hard.” He balanced on one hand and one foot, and extended his other arm and leg straight up in the air behind him. “Look, I’m an H.”

“No, they really can’t. Try it, By, and show him.”

Byerly did his best to imitate Jet’s position, failed miserably, and toppled over onto the floor. Everyone else, including Toby, seemed to find this hilarious. “What are _you_ laughing at?” By demanded. “Need I remind you that you fall over every time you try to take a step by yourself?”

Toby laughed harder.


End file.
